Last December, I lay in my bed scrolling through Instagram reels. I wept as videos of bloodied children, mourning mothers, and fathers pulling people out from underneath rubble crossed my screen. My heart broke as I contemplated why I was home for Christmas with my family while another was orphaned and starving in Gaza.
Social media permits us a new proximity with global conflict. While before we could largely remain disconnected from the suffering of those around the world, this is no longer the case. Social media makes it easy to access personal narratives from war, thus promoting sympathy for its victims. At least 41,870 Palestinians have been killed since October 7th.[1] This is more than double the number of people who can fit in the Marriott Center at BYU. When human cost is this massive, it is easy to view human beings simply as numbers. I believe that social media can prevent us from falling into this trap.
Social media is a tool that helps us humanize war victims. Israeli policies, including complicated and arbitrary checkpoints through which humanitarian aid has to pass, have created severe human rights violations in Gaza. 70% of Gaza’s population is suffering catastrophic food insecurity.[2] This statistic itself is powerful, but it’s hard to imagine what it’d be like to live in an area where a large majority of people were starving. However, the perception of food insecurity in Gaza changes when one watches a video of a child sifting through flour in the dirt because his family hasn’t eaten in days. This illustrates the daily implications that weaponized starvation has on a family in Gaza.
Similarly, it is heartbreaking to see a headline that Israel violated international law by bombing the Ibn Rushd school and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Mosque in Gaza, killing 26.[3] My perspective deepened, however, when I saw a video of a man crying because he could not clean himself to pray due to lack of bathroom and water access. As a person who values religious worship, seeing the barriers to religious practices because of war simultaneously deepens feelings of kinship and outrage. People of faith in Gaza become more than war casualties–they become one with us.
The war in Gaza has arguably been one of the most publicized wars in history. Its publicity is unique, as social media has given a platform for personal stories to be told, and the voices of those experiencing the war to be amplified. The question remains: has this had any actual implications in the war?
U.S. support for Israel has not changed, and we continue to supply them with arms and money. Support for Palestine has grown among younger Democrat voters, many of whom are upset with Biden’s policies on the issue and dissatisfied with Harris’ approach. Arab voters in Minnesota are threatening to not vote along traditional Democrat lines because of the Biden and Harris administration’s failure to prevent mass murder in Gaza.[4] Yet, it’s hard to say if growing support for the Palestinian cause via social media has made any difference in the war.
I don’t think institutional reactions, however, are the only measure of effectiveness. Because I have seen personal accounts of the war in Gaza, I am more empathetic to Palestinians. Antisemitism once prevented some Americans from embracing their Jewish neighbors, who came as refugees during the Holocaust era and experienced intense persecution. While the United States has let very few Palestinian refugees enter the country, seeing the situation from which they came should propel us to be welcoming and compassionate. If witnessing war in closer proximity can’t change policy, it should at least change us as individuals.
I don’t suggest that we spend our whole lives watching reels or TikToks that make us feel pessimistic about the world and life generally. The spread of misinformation via social media cannot be overlooked as well. Fact-checking the things we watch is necessary to ensure our information is correct. Overconsumption of news can lead to poor mental health and can disconnect us from reality. Ignoring global suffering is not the desirable alternative either. There is value in acknowledging the pain and distress of others. Social media gives us access to stories of individuals who would otherwise suffer quietly. Gérard Prunier said, “Letting their deaths go unrecorded, or distorted by propaganda, or misunderstood through simplified clichés, would in fact bring the last touch to the killers’ work in completing the victims’ dehumanisation. Man is largely a social construct and to deny a man the social meaning of his death is to kill him twice, first in the flesh, then in the spirit.” While we can’t directly change policy, we can pay attention. When we mourn with those that mourn, we hallow their suffering.
